Thomson

It’s a heck of a way to run a pre-election campaign. On the eve of an expected election, politicians usually spend their time playing up good news, downplaying the bad, shaking hands and kissing babies.

Tel Aviv, Israel — The Israeli military started to get serious about post-traumatic stress disorder 40 years ago in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War.

A relatively easy victory in the earlier Six-Day War had lulled the country and its armed forces into a false sense of security, but the fierce conflict of October 1973 exposed unexpected weakness in the Israeli military machine and left deep emotional scars.

“From the mental health perspective, the Yom Kippur War was what the Vietnam and Korean wars were for the United States — especially Vietnam,” he says.

“In 1973 we had a lot of soldiers not fighting with their own units and a lot of reservists who didn’t know their commanders. For these forces the amount of PTSD was around 35 to 40 per cent, which is a lot.”

Treatment for battlefield trauma was crude and often compounded the damage; soldiers were given a dose of truth drug and encouraged to re-live the trauma.

“We now know that to make people re-experience in such a rough way is harming,” says Fruchter, “so today we have a lot of post-traumatic stress disorder among veterans from that time.”

The Israeli military has since pushed for new ways to prevent and treat the injury, creating a separate mental health department 33 years ago and latterly a senior officer specifically in charge of PTSD.

Helped by the work of Israeli researchers such as psychologist Mooli Lahad and Tel Aviv University professor Zahava Solomon — both former leaders in the military’s mental health section — Fruchter is leading an effort aimed more at prevention than cure.

The IDF now rigorously tests and monitors recruits at numerous stages of their mandatory service — three years for men, two for women — to identify those whose psychological tests reveal a greater risk of emotional breakdown on the front lines. Some will automatically be given support roles, while others will receive resilience training, or primary prevention.

“Primary prevention is like being made immune,” he says. “We try to help (soldiers) to meet the stress before being in battle or a fight.”

The IDF has worked systematically to integrate two mental health professionals into their fighting units and to train commanders “in the language of resilience training.”

“We have built a concept of organic mental health officer at the company level,” he adds. “They speak the same language and eat and sleep at the same barracks. He is your combat comrade so you feel more free to talk to him. They go after the soldiers, they don’t wait in their offices or their clinics for the soldiers to come to them.”

Fruchter speaks of developing “a mental health gym” in every army unit to strengthen resilience to PTSD — a concept that the United States military is watching closely for its own troops.

The name is a deliberate effort to bring mental health into the same sphere as physical health and proposes that the mind, like the body, can be trained to resist the rigours of trauma.

Mental health stigma exists in the Israeli military but is minimal, he says, and unlike Canada’s, Israel’s military culture has developed to a point where troops don’t feel they are risking their careers by an admission of mental injury.

“Stigma is being reduced every year because many higher commanders are seeking help,” says Fruchter.

“They aren’t afraid to admit it to their friends and colleagues because they know it won’t harm their careers. It’s part of the maturation of the army.”

The Canadian and Israeli military experiences are obviously not replicas, he says, but there are lessons a scattered military population can learn from their counterparts in a small battle-scarred country.

Many Canadian Afghanistan veterans complain that they felt lost when they returned from deployment because their units were broken up before they had the chance to decompress and talk about their experiences with those who had shared them.

Fruchter understands why that would hurt.

“If I’m a Canadian soldier, I have been away for six to eight months without going back home,” he says. “When I go back, the people in my surroundings don’t understand what I’m experiencing so they can’t rebuild my resources and resilience because they don’t understand.

“When I’m sent away I have to change my coping skills and then change them back when I come home. It’s a totally different and very hard experience to be surrounded by people who don’t know what you’ve been though. It is no surprise they are suffering from more PTSD.”

Israeli soldiers are never far from home and are allowed to spend every two or three weekends with family and friends, all of whom understand the military experience.

“My girlfriend has been in the army so she knows what I’m talking about,” says Fruchter. “My father has been in the Six-Day War and Yom Kippur War. I can rebuild my strength because I have a knowing and understanding unit around me. They all know where I’ve been and what I have done because they have been there and done it, too.”